Blog
20 March

Our Learnings from SXSW: Modern Customer Engagement Relies On Personalised Experiences

Today’s consumers are tech savvy and well-connected via multiple platforms. As a result, they have high expectations. No longer is it enough to remember loyal customer’s Birthdays. To connect with customers long term brands need to be able to create personalised experiences throughout the customer lifecycle, where the marketing message is always relevant. Dave, our co-founder, attended South by Southwest festival (SXSW) last weekend. He joined a panel with leading investors and entrepreneurs to discuss the big marketing trends – Automation and Personalisation – and how with the help of AI technology we can now create highly relevant and personalised experiences at scale. The panel also shared the latest innovative solutions startups have built for personalised marketing.

SXSW is a creative film, interactive media, and music festival and conference organized annually in Austin, Texas. The event gathers influential artists and business leaders around the world to share the latest trends shaping the world.

Personalisation as a ‘Must-Have’ in the Marketing Toolkit

All the experts in the panel agreed that customers are demanding more tailored and personalised experiences, and acknowledged that personalisation is no longer a shiny new thing that brands must try out. Instead it has become a ‘must-have’ in the marketing strategy. Recently, several surveys have revealed similar findings. Salesforce found that over half of the consumers will share personal data in exchange for relevant product recommendations and personalised shopping experiences. Similarly, Accenture concluded two-thirds of consumers to be more likely to make a purchase from a retailer that sends them relevant, personalised promotions. Personalisation makes everyone’s life a bit easier. Consumers can avoid the always-so-painful paradox of choice: 40% of consumers have left a website simply because they were overwhelmed by the amount of options. At the same time, personalisation enables brands to acquire and retain customers at lower cost.

The panel also discussed the importance for brands to build up their CRM data to enable personalisation on a 1-to-1 level. This can be seen as a ‘next-level’, or ‘hyper-personalisation’, by creating highly relevant, individually tailored communication. With this sophisticated marketing approach brands can show consumers that they truly want to best cater to their individual needs. Several brands, such British Airways and Made.com, are already using the Spirable platform to leverage their CRM data and brand creative assets to delight their loyal customers with personalised offers. For instance, furniture retailer Made.com managed to triple its online conversions by curating beautiful, individually tailored style guide video ads.

Engaging with Dynamically and Uniquely Created Experiences

The main theme discussed was that personalisation and useful AI is dependent on having the right data. The good news is that Facebook, Twitter and other social channels allow brands to target audiences by using their data and to overlay other sources of data. Still, many companies overlook the benefits of personalised marketing and purely rely on creating generic global campaigns.

Especially personalised videos are a highly powerful way to engage with consumers: relevant video ads get three times the attention of an average video ad. Dave shared how our AI-powered Spirable platform makes it possible to target individuals with relevant video ad content at scale. Spirable connects and unlimited amount of data feeds including CRM data, social audience data, location data and live contextual data into video templates-  chanding the creative dynamically as the data changes in real-time. The platform thendelivers these videos across channels. Major brands across industries, such as PlayStation, FarFetch and Domino’s have chosen Spirable platform to automate their personalised video ad campaigns. Our clients have achieved impressive results. Personalised ads have helped them to increase conversions, built loyalty and lower costs of acquisition.

To learn more about how Spirable can help you connect with your consumers on a personal level, contact us for a demo.

The members of the panel:

Dave O’Meara, Co-founder of Spirable; Sarah Fay, Managing Director at Glasswing Ventures; Don Douglas, Senior Managing Director at Geekdom Fund; Sean Finnegan, Co-founder & Partner of Chameleon Collective; Allie Feinstein, Sr. Director of Innovation at VentureFuel (moderator).